Jersey City Times: Jersey City’s Rich But Little-Known Baseball History (Article based in part on MJCH lecture, Skeeters to Giants to Dodgers, April 5, 2025)
- Museum Jersey City History
- Apr 16
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 16
Jersey City’s Rich But Little-Known Baseball History
Jersey City Times
by Ron Leir April 16, 2025
While Jersey City has never hosted a permanent Major League Baseball franchise, when it comes to America’s National Pastime, Hudson County’s largest municipality boasts a rich history that includes Jackie Robinson, Don Drysdale, and Rickey Henderson, to name a few.
Earlier this month, locals were guided through the city’s baseball legacy by Joseph Colford, grandson of a Mallory Avenue saloon keeper who became an owner of the Jersey City Skeeters when they played on the city’s West Side.
As was the case nationwide, Colford said, the local nines had to deal with racial prejudice against Black players, a ban on Sunday games as “unethical” in the eyes of religious leaders and the struggle to keep teams solvent.
The earliest mid-19th-century local teams played under a set of rules devised by English-born Henry Chadwick – a New York Times sportswriter who covered cricket and baseball played at Elysian Fields and elsewhere in the area.
Professional baseball in Jersey City had its origins with the Jersey City Skeeters – debuting in 1885 at the Grand Street Grounds near present-day Ferris High School at Prior and Montgomery streets, where flooding and poor field conditions often forced cancellations.
The major league’s N.Y. Giants acquired the team and moved it to the city’s Heights, where it built a new 4.5-acre ball field called Oakland Park. Modeled after the Giants’ original Polo Grounds, overlooking Downtown Jersey City and Hoboken. It accommodated about 6,000 fans.
The Skeeters hosted its parent club in an exhibition game September 3,1888, and won 8-2 with 5,000 spectators on hand.
In 1889, the Giants took on the American Association’s St. Louis Browns in the postseason playoffs at Oakland Park and emerged as world champs.
But the Giants’ New Jersey connection proved short-lived.
New York City griped that the Polo Grounds at 11th Street and Fifth Avenue was an obstacle to the city’s plan to extend its street grid north of Central Park the stadium’s unruly crowds drew complaints from neighbors.
Seven decades later, the Giants found themselves in a similar dilemma, after a lengthy sojourn at a newer version of the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan ended with a move to the West Coast. (More about that later.)
Ultimately, the Giants agreed to move further north to the Coogan’s Bluff area, opening that new park in 1890.
Meanwhile, the Jersey City Skeeters shifted to various locations after leaving Oakland Park, playing at Johnston Avenue Grounds in the Lafayette neighborhood near the Morris Canal and Van Horne Street; West Side (Lincoln) Park (now occupied by New Jersey City University); and Roosevelt Stadium at Droyers Point off Newark Bay.
An unwritten law, in effect, omitted Blacks from the ranks of organized leagues, but, as a notable exception to the practice of the day, the 1886 Skeeters – then a member of the Eastern League – hired pitching phenom George Stovey.
During his one season with the Skeeters, Stovey compiled a record of 16-15 with a 1.13 ERA and 203 strikeouts.
But in 1887, “Cap” Anson, player-manager of the Chicago White Stockings, set the tone for years to come, refusing to allow his team to take the field against any Black opponents … until Jackie Robinson appeared on the scene years later.
A ban on Sunday baseball was defied by the Skeeters twice in the early going of the 20th century.
The initial confrontation happened in 1904 at an exhibition game between the Skeeters and Philadelphia Athletics at what was called the Jersey City Annex at Avenue A and 46th Street in Bayonne. Players were arrested, but the game was allowed to continue.
Soon after the 1906 season opened at its new home, West Side Park, players charged with violating the Sunday baseball ban were summoned to court and fined one dollar apiece—a token enforcement of the law.
An informal poll of local fans by the Evening Journal newspaper showed overwhelming support for Sunday games, with 6,618 in favor and 909 opposed.
Fans at West Side Park were treated to solid mound performances by Canadian-born Russell Ford thanks to his mastery of a trick pitch called the “emery” ball which he masqueraded as a (then-legal) spitter but was really a scuffed ball.
In the 1909 season that talent helped him whiff 189 batters in Eastern League play with the Jersey City squad and, next season, he was called up to the International League club, the Highlanders (pre-cursor to the N.Y. Yankees) and continued pitching through 1914. (He was no relation to future Yankees hurler Ed “Whitey” Ford.)
Olympian standout Jim Thorpe was picked up by the Skeeters in 1915, but he contributed little. After he was alleged to have participated in a bar fight and his watch was reportedly stolen from his locker, he was released after just four months with the team.
Meanwhile, Skeeters’ owner William Stephen Devery, a one-time New York cop promoted to chief, was kicked out after failing to meet the team’s contractual obligations, and the team disbanded after finishing dead last from 1913 to 1915.
By 1918, however, the team was reassembled, continuing to play in West Side Park, but its dismal performance continued, and, after a string of new owners (including Joe Colford and partner Frank Donnelly), the Skeeters moved to Syracuse in 1934, and professional baseball vanished from Jersey City for three years.
But the picture brightened when Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague snagged a $1.1 million federal WPA grant, which Hague used to finance the construction of Roosevelt Stadium off Newark Bay.
The new ballpark – once again a N.Y. Giants farm team, now in the International League – opened April 29, 1937, against the Albany Senators, with 31,000 fans watching.
Unfortunately, the team continued its losing ways, ending the season in seventh place in an 8-team league.
Among the better-known team members during the war years was former All-Star Chicago Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett, who helmed the Jersey City Giants from 1943 to 1945.
April 1946 saw the breaking of the color barrier for the game’s “modern era” when Jackie Robinson took the field in Jersey City for the Montreal Royals, a farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
He collected four hits, including a 3-run homer, four RBIs, and two stolen bases in a 14-1 victory over the Jersey City team.
The win was credited to Jersey City’s Barney DeForge, a Lincoln High School graduate whose professional career is cut short when he is banned from baseball for alleged gambling.
Robinson, meanwhile, hit .349 for the season and was promoted to Brooklyn the following year. After a 10-year Major League career, he was elected to the Hall of Fame. A statue honoring him is displayed outside the PATH Transportation Center in Journal Square.
Roosevelt Stadium continued to host home games for the N.Y. Giants, along with high school football contests, until the team, faced with persistent bleeding of revenue with attendance averaging 837, relocated to Ottawa in 1951.
The Brooklyn Dodgers, meanwhile, were looking for a new home—preferably in Brooklyn—to replace Ebbets Field. However, as negotiations with NYC planner Robert Moses dragged on, Dodgers management worked out an arrangement to lease Roosevelt Stadium, where they played 15 home games from 1956 to 57 before, ultimately, moving to Los Angeles, following the Giants’ lead.
In 1960-61, the Jersey City ballpark welcomed the Havana Sugar Kings as a Cincinnati Reds farm team in the International League after Castro kicked the team out of Cuba. The Jersey City Jerseys, as they were then known, played out the 1961 season.
The stadium’s last affiliation with professional baseball came in 1977-78 with a low-level Cleveland farm team whose roster included future Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson. The 1978 team finished last, but Henderson, who complained about bad lighting and poor maintenance, stole 87 bases in 115 attempts.
Some Roosevelt Stadium footnotes:
In 1956, Jersey City’s Johnny Kucks, a Dickinson High alum, struck out Jackie Robinson, notching a World Series victory for the N.Y. Yankees. After the game, Robinson announced his retirement.
Also in 1956, Giants’ star and, later, Hall of Famer, Willie Mays hit a home run that cleared the outfield wall – the only time a batter had knocked a ball out of this park.
In 1957, Dodgers hurler Don Drysdale, an 8-time National League MVP, tossed the first of his 49 career shutouts.
In the years following, the stadium hosted All Star professional baseball games, minor league football, drum-and-bugle corps competitions and rock concerts (including several performances by The Grateful Dead).
Ultimately, citing safety factors, the city’s governing body voted to sell and land to a developer to build a middle income housing complex known as Society Hill. The old ballpark was torn down in 1985.
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